


Who Ya Gonna Call?

by guineamania



Series: GYWO Bingo [16]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Marius and Grantaire BFFs, Paranormal Investigators, aka Ghostbusters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-04-28 22:42:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5108264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guineamania/pseuds/guineamania
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marius and Grantaire have been friends for ever, and they also can see ghosts.<br/>So when they are called in to help remove a ghost, they do not expect to find a group of revolutionaries that seem to think Marius and Grantaire are their long dead friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who Ya Gonna Call?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [telm_393](https://archiveofourown.org/users/telm_393/gifts).



“So why are we here again?” Grantaire sighed as they sat in the living room of a decrepit flat on Boulevard Saint Michel.

“The owner says that the place is haunted and they can’t get anyone to rent the flat because of it,” Marius explained, tinkering once again with their equipment. Grantaire and Marius grew up together in the suburbs of London and considered themselves brothers in all but blood. When they reached their teenage years something strange began to happen. They began to see ghosts. It was a strange phenomenon to see a practically see through girl wandering down your school corridor leaving a trail of blood that no one else could see. The saving grace was that the two best friends could both see these strange occurrences and could draw comfort from each other when no one understood them. It was logical that the best friends would grow up and set up their own ghost hunting business. Helping ghost pass over to the other side was actually quite a profitable job and they could live happily on the road, even though both of them had been cut off. Surprisingly, they didn’t consider hunting spirits a really job, who would have thought?

“Well I can’t feel anything,” Grantaire shrugged, plugging the last of the sensors in and throwing his backpack in the corner.

“We’ll stay overnight and if we don’t find anything then we’ll take our consultation fee and move onto the haunting that your brother sent,” Marius rolled his eyes, carefully unrolling his sleeping bag with more concern for his belongings than Grantaire had.

“Do we really have to deal with his ghost issue? When I die I am going to haunt his ass anyway,” Grantaire muttered, sauntering over to his pack and unloading his surprisingly unbroken belongings. Grantaire really did not have a good relationship with his family; they were all Harvard trained lawyers and loved it in their mansions as they happened evil people get away with their crimes. Grantaire didn’t want to join the family business, and so he was thrown out onto the streets with only the clothes on his back. Thankfully Marius was planning to leave home so they set out together.

 

Grantaire was expecting this case to be a dud. It was not a dud. That was why Grantaire jumped awake in the middle of the night to find himself surrounded by spirits. This was a major infestation. “Marius,” Grantaire hissed, elbowing his best friend in the side in an attempt to jolt him awake. Marius rolled over and his eyes fluttered open, only to be startled awake at what he saw.

“Grantaire,” Marius hissed back even though they knew full well the ghost would be able to hear them.

“Told you it was them Enj, I told you!” a young boy called out, pulling on the sleeve of one of the other ghosts. The second ghost was clearly in charge of the group; he stood tall and his face was cold and hard unlike the excited expressions of the rest.

“It does look like them Enjolras, and they can see us,” a tall and lanky ghost with spindly glasses reasoned with the chief. They had never seen this structure before; all the ghosts they had helped had been alone or in pairs. They seemed to have a structured hierarchy, Grantaire was mildly terrified by the thought. If ghost could organise themselves then they may become a threat. It was also worrying that these ghosts seemed to recognise Grantaire and Marius. It could only be that they had known them and died but Grantaire had no recollection of these people at all.

“Any plan Marius,” Grantaire hissed once again but Marius just shrugged. See most people believed that ghosts were harmless. Ghost were not harmless, ghosts could kill people, and they could destroy things. Grantaire and Marius’ job wasn’t that easy when they met and angry ghost.

“Of course I don’t have a plan,” Marius snarled, trying to reach for his stun gun. They had found out the hard way that ghosts are effected more than humans by electricity. They could never explain why but they weren’t going to let Grantaire being hit by lightning go to waste; it did always seem to be Grantaire that was beaten up by their malicious ghosts.

“You’re brains, I’m just the pretty face!” Grantaire hissed, in a slightly louder tone.

“Well I’m sorry Mr America, I haven’t come up with anything yet,” Marius sassed back.

“Do they realise we can hear everything they say?” another ghost questioned but Grantaire held up his finger to shush them.

“We will get to you in a minute.”

 

“So what you are saying is in my past life I was an irritating Bonapartist who was friends with all of you guys. We fought in the revolution of 1832, you all died along with my best friend Grantaire. I was rescued by some random dude because his daughter loved me and I died of old age many years later,” Marius sighed, rubbing a tired hand over his eyes. Eventually Grantaire and Marius had worked out that none of these ghosts were trying to kill them, they were actually friends of theirs in a past life. It was all bizarre but they could see ghosts, everything was a little bizarre.

“Are we believing this Pontmercy?” Grantaire asked, sipping from the coffee he had wandered off to get. Grantaire thrived on annoying people that thought they were superior to him and Marius had just learnt to go along with it. So when the tall scary ghost (Enjolras he called himself) had told Grantaire to sit down and take this seriously, Grantaire had accepted the challenge and wandered off to make himself a coffee.

“It does sound plausible. Who knows what happens to the souls when we help them pass over,” Marius shrugged, the crowd of ghosts sat their silently watching the duo make their decision.

“Okay so if we believe you. What do you need us to do?”

“We want to be human.”

 

“Okay woah back up there hotshot!” Grantaire exclaimed and Marius’ jaw just dropped. “Our job is helping you cross over not help you come back. Hell we don’t even know how to do that!” Grantaire continued ranting.

“You did it,” the ghost that called himself Coufeyrac replied becoming the new receiver of Grantaire’s tirade. Marius just sat back, Grantaire knew what he was talking about and Marius loved watching Grantaire work. He had an amazing talent of talking so much he swayed people to his point of view before they could fight their corner. So Marius just sat back and let Grantaire do his thing with a smug little smile.

“Oh and you expect we know how that happened when we have no idea who any of you people are,” Grantaire continued, raising a finger for the Courfeyrac ghost to be silent. “No, we refuse so you guys are either going to have to stay here and rot in this prison or you are going to let us help you pass over to the other realm. Then you can test your luck with the regeneration lottery. Any arguments?” The room was silent. It was clear that the Grantaire they remembered would not have had the courage to stand up to the whole group and tell them off. But Marius was proud his Grantaire could. “So which are you going for?”

 

“The first step towards passing over is to work out what you regret from your life,” Marius explained, pacing in front of the crowd of seated ghosts. “More often than not it is either regret or anger that hold a spirit in our world,” he continued, feeling like a teacher. The way they worked was that Grantaire dealt with the angry spirits and Marius dealt with the docile spirits. Grantaire had slunk off to ring the owner to get them ore time. It was going to take a while to get all of the ghosts passed over. “Now if you say you fought in an unsuccessful revolution then it is probably something you wished you had done before you died or wished you had sad to someone,” Marius described, he really wanted a whiteboard and meter ruler. This was actually quite fun. Grantaire poked his head in the door and caught Marius’ eye. “So talk about it amongst yourselves,” Marius blurted out, turning to talk to his brother in arms.

“Enjoying yourself sweet heart,” Grantaire teased softly once he had Marius’ attention.

“I’m loving it, you can see in their eyes that they are not used to us two running the show,” Marius beamed. “What’s the issue?”

“The owner is wanting to call the press. He wants to exploit the fact there are ghosts and sell the story,” Grantaire explained and Marius swore, the smile dropping from his face. Marius and Grantaire’s business thrived on them not being noticed. Their name was spread by word of mouth and there was never any press involved. Press only slowed them down and blew everything out of proportion. What people want in a ghost story isn’t what they deal with. Most of the time there’s no possessions or flying objects or wailing in the dark. Most of the time it is just cold spots and sounds of footsteps, nothing exciting and easily a figment of someone’s imagination. Also, they preferred that their ‘special talents’ remained secret for as long as possible. “I have managed to stall him but we have a day to pass these lot over and run,” Grantaire continued.

“We could just leave now,” Marius murmured, the smile returning back to Grantaire’s face.

“Oh darling. You know we could never do that,” Grantaire sighed, their sense of morality was just too strong for their own good. Marius just shrugged and they turned back to the group.

 

“So how we are going to do this is, each of you are going to come and talk to either me or R. We are going to try and work out what is holding you here then work out how to let you go. So now I advise you say your goodbyes. We have no idea what is going to happen when you pass over. It could be that you all end up in the same place. However you could never see each other again,” Marius informed them remorsefully. He hated to split them up but it had to be done. The duo respectfully turned their backs as the group embraced each other tearfully. Nearly two hundred years together was probably coming to an end. When they were all done, Marius and Grantaire set to work, as supernatural psychologists.

 

Grantaire had Joly first. “I think I regret not having the chance to finish my degree and help people as doctor,” Joly murmured and Grantaire breathed a sigh of relief, at least one of these was going to be easier.

“Now if you went back to that time, knowing the outcome, would you do anything any different?” Grantaire questioned even though he knew the answer. But did Joly?

“I, I think I would warn everyone but,” Joly stammered, pausing for a moment as it dawned on him. “I would still fight. I would stand with my brothers,” Joly beamed.

“So there is no point regretting what could have been, yes it would be brilliant if you would have changed the world with the revolution and then become a brilliant doctor. But you have come to terms with your choices … let it go,” Grantaire smiled as the ghost began to fade from existence.

 

Overall it was pretty easy going. Bossuet felt guilty that his clumsiness might have hindered the revolution, Marius managed to convince him otherwise because it was highly unlikely a little stumble would have caused such a large defeat. Jehan felt sadness for all the people they deserted, Grantaire convinced him that their intentions were honourable and no one would have resented them for dying. Gavroche felt guilt that his sister had died and there was nothing he could do about it’ it was easy to convince him that his sister would have hated him for sacrificing himself anyway. Courfeyrac took a little more convincing that the deaths weren’t his fault even though he recruited a lot of them. Bahorel felt anger and so was obviously Grantaire’s responsibility. The large man was bordering on poltergeist meaning that at least Grantaire could touch him. See strong spirits could move things but humans could not touch them. But poltergeists could touch people and people could touch them. Bahorel was built like a middle weight boxer and Grantaire knew exactly how to deal with this situation. And Grantaire’s irritating nature was how he found himself in a massively unfair boxing match with a ghost. However every time Bahorel swung, Grantaire dodged and they continued this dance until Bahorel kicked Grantaire’s legs out from under him and the human thumped to the floor. But the anger no longer radiated from Bahorel and he started to fade. That was all he needed, to get that anger out on someone. “You’re as good as ever R,” Bahorel joked before he faded away completely. Combeferre and Feuilly both faded away after hearing everyone else. They both had regretted not helping the people but agreed there was no use holding on to it now. Now two remained.

 

Grantaire took Enjolras and Marius took Eponine.

 

“You are the most stubborn man I have ever met!” Grantaire exclaimed, leaning back on his chair as a furious Enjolras loomed over him. But he wasn’t really angry, but Enjolras was. Now Enjolras was stubborn and the easiest way to get a stubborn person to speak their mind was to get them emotional. Grantaire was an expert in getting people emotional, it stemmed from his ability to talk about nothing at high speeds for a very long time.

“And you are even more annoying now than you were then!” Enjolras snapped back.

“I mean seriously it’s like you know me already why are you even listening to me, should I go get Marius? Would you like to talk to him more, I’m sure he is a lot less irritating than me. I thing we have history, do we have history? Did I kill your cat or something?” Grantaire rambled and was interrupted by Enjolras.

“I feel guilty that you died!” Enjolras screamed. Grantaire stopped in his tracks. “I felt guilty that you died when you didn’t even care. All the others fought for the cause, they were in it despite the risks. You fought for me and I can’t handle it!” Enjolras continued, tears streaming down his face.

“Enj, look at me. I don’t hate you. I have a great life here, and personally it offends me that this is the reason you haven’t passed over,” Grantaire explained, standing up to look Enjolras in the eyes. “I make my own choices, no one is responsible for me. Don’t really guilty, it doesn’t matter what my reasons were, they were my reasons and no one elses,” Grantaire continued calmly as not to alert the stunned Enjolras to the fact he was beginning to fade.

“I’m glad it was you two,” Enjolras smiled weakly, and disappeared.

 

“I know what my regret is,” Eponine shrugged as soon as she sat down across from Marius.

“Okay,” Marius smiled, he was glad he picked the easy one. Grantaire was probably going to be having trouble with the stubborn revolutionary leader.

“I never told the man I love that I love him,” Eponine confessed, refusing to look Marius in the eye.

“Well I guess it is too late now but you,” Marius began but was interrupted.

“I love you!” Eponine started, stunning the ghost hunter into silence. Now many questions were running through Marius’ mind and most of them were incredibly insensitive and wouldn’t help them in anyway. But there was one thing that he could do. It would help Eponine pass over and he would never see her again. Marius leant forwards and tenderly kissed Eponine on the lips. It was the strangest sensation, it was cold and it felt sort of like he was kissing fog. But the smile on Eponine’s face was worth it as she began to fade away. He hated to raise her hopes but she needed that, she needed a little happiness. And she was cute.

 

“Can we go on holiday?” Grantaire questioned as he emeraged from the back room.

“I really do think we deserve it but we also can’t afford it,” Marius shrugged.

“Well we know my brother won’t be in his Spanish villa …”

“We are not breaking into your brother’s villa!”


End file.
